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Leroy shook his head, but Hud could tell that the moment he left, Leroy would be spreading the word.

"Wait a minute," Leroy said. "There might be someone you could ask about Ginger." He seemed to hesitate. "Ginger used to flirt with him all the time when he came in." The cook's eyes narrowed. "You're probably not going to want to hear this…"

Hud let out a snort. "Let me guess. Marshal Brick Savage."

"Yeah, how'd you know?" Leroy asked, sounding surprised.

Hud smiled. "Because I know my father." He had another flash of memory of a woman in red. Only this time, he heard her laughter dying off down the street.

As Hud climbed into his patrol SUV, he turned south onto the highway and headed toward West Yellowstone and the lake house his father had bought on Hebgen Lake.

He couldn't put off talking to his father any longer.

Chapter Nine

"I wondered when I'd be seeing you," Brick Savage said when he answered the door. The former marshal shoved the door open wider and without another word, turned and walked back into the house.

Hud stepped in, closed the door, then followed his father to the back part of the house to the kitchen and small dining nook in front of a bank of windows.

He studied his father under the unkind glare of the fluorescent lights, surprised how much the elder Savage had aged. Hud remembered him as being much more imposing. Brick seemed shrunken, half the man he'd once been. Age hadn't been kind to him.

Brick opened the refrigerator door and took out two root beers. Hud watched him take down two tall glasses and fill each with ice cubes.

"You still drink root beer," Brick said. Not really a question. Root beer was about the only thing Hud had in common with his father, he thought as he took the filled glass.

"Sit down," Brick said.

Hud pulled up one of the chairs at the table, his gaze going to the window. Beyond it was a huge, flat, white expanse that Hud knew was the frozen snow-covered surface of Hebgen Lake. Not far to the southeast was Yellowstone Park.

He wondered why Brick had moved up here. For the solitude? For the fishing? Or had his father just wanted out of the canyon for some reason? Bad memories maybe.

"So what can I do for you?" Brick asked, and took a long swig of his root beer.

Hud doubted his father was so out of touch that he hadn't heard about the woman's body that was found in the Cardwell Ranch well. In fact, Hud suspected the coroner had filled him in on every facet of the case.

"I'm investigating the murder of Ginger Adams," Hud said, watching his father's expression.

Nothing. Brick seemed to be waiting for more.

"Ginger Adams, a pretty redheaded waitress who worked at the Roadside Café seventeen years ago?" Hud said.

"What does that have to do with me?" Brick asked, sounding baffled.

"You knew her."

Brick shrugged. "I'm sorry, but I don't remember her. I don't remember most of them."

Hud cursed under his breath. "Well, I remember. I keep seeing Ginger in a slinky red dress and red high heels. And for some reason, I keep seeing you with her."

"Could have been me," he admitted congenially. "That was how many years ago?"

"Seventeen according to Leroy at the café."

Brick nodded. "The year your mother died. Oh yeah, it could have been me." Brick looked down at his half-empty glass of root beer.

Hud rubbed a hand over his face, feeling the old anger toward his father. "You broke her heart, you know."

"I broke your mother's heart long before she got sick," his father said. "I was your mother's number one disappointment." He looked up at Hud. "Isn't that what she always told you?"

"She loved you."

Brick laughed. "Maybe. At one time. You won't believe this, but your mother was the only woman I ever loved."

"You had an odd way of showing it."

"You disappoint a woman enough times and you quit trying not to. But you didn't drive all this way to talk about this, did you?"

Hud cleared his throat. There was no point getting into the past. He couldn't change it. He couldn't change his father